Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the operation of an electronic device, and more particularly relates to a method for switching to an input interface of an electronic device and a related electronic device.
Background of the Related Art
With the continuous development of digital signal processing, digital image processing and computer network technologies, a great number of electronic devices including televisions, computers, all-in-one PCs, tablet computers and the like are being widely used. Such electronic devices may have input interfaces for connecting input devices, such as a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), a Video Graphics Array (VGA) interface, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface, a network interface, a component video interface, an Audio and Video (AV) interface, an S-Video interface, a composite video interface, a Radio-Frequency (RF) modulator interface, a Digital Video Interface (DVI), a display port interface and the like. Through these input interfaces, the electronic devices can be connected to various input devices, such as game consoles, set-top boxes, Digital Video Disk (DVD) players, mobile hard disks, USB flash drives (U disks) and the like.
Taking television as an example, traditionally the user can switch an input device connected to the television through an input interface by means of buttons on a remote controller or on the television housing. In one existing solution, when the user presses the “SWITCH” button once, the television switches audio and video to a certain input device, and when the user presses the “SWITCH” button again, the television switches audio and video to the next input device. Since certain processing time is needed when the television processes audio and video switching, when the user presses the “SWITCH” button once, the user needs to wait for a certain period of time, and the user cannot judge whether the currently switched input device is an external device that is expected to be used by the user by viewing images displayed or hearing sounds produces on the television until the television completes the processing. Therefore, with such a method being adopted, the user may need to spend a great amount of time to perform the switching of the input device.
In another existing solution, the television can list all input interfaces on a display to allow the user to first select the input interface to which the user wants to switch and then directly switch audio and video to the input interface selected by the user according to the user's selection (for example, by pressing the “OK” button). However, since the television generally only lists identifiers of input interfaces (for example, HDMI1, HDMI2, AV, TV and the like) on the display for user selection, it is very difficult for the user to intuitively determine the input interface that is expected to be switched to by only viewing these identifiers.